The Middle Child
by LlamaMathilde
Summary: Life as Harry Potter's squib child is hell.


A/N: This is a work of fanfiction, not for profit. - LlamaMathilde

* * *

_Guess who I'm lucky enough to be? My name's Fred. Fred...Potter. Yeah, that's right. You didn't read about me in the epilogue of my family's wonderful saga, did you? That's because I wasn't there. I don't mean I wasn't born yet; I'm the third child, between Lily and Albus Severus, whom I like to call As, which is just what it sounds like._

_No, I wasn't on the platform because I was at home, rereading Lord of the Rings and trying to feel glad that there wasn't anyone around to crush my Pringles or, worse, hex me. Don't get me wrong – any time away from that lot is a vacation. It's the school I wish I could go to, with all-you-can-eat puddings and Transfiguration class, but I can't. I go to Westside Boys'. Are you confused yet? Let me spell it out: the great Harry Potter's middle son is a squib._

Fred slammed the journal shut with a curse and shoved it under the bed. He'd gotten too caught up writing. He slid the journal under his bed. Who would his tormenter be this time?

Someone was skipping steps – _James_.

"Hey, Fred, where are you?"

"I bet he's writing in that journal of his again," floated Lily's smug voice.

"_Accio_ Fred's pansy diary! – Aaah!"

Fred had left the door open on purpose. He smirked as James charged in, dripping wet, peeling a bit of a photograph off of his face.

"What's this?" James bellowed.

"Fred's pansy diary," Fred sneered. Digital cameras were the greatest thing ever. Ten copies of a snapshot of his diary had cost him a dollar at the corner store, plus a dollar for the water balloons.

"Oh, _so_ funny. Accio Fred's _real_ dia – oof!"

Fred snatched the journal out of the air, bowling into James as he shot down the stairs.

"Frederick!" Ginny Potter looked highly unamused, but her scowl was directed up the stairs. "Is James bothering you again, love?"

"_Is James bothering you?_" James muttered poisonously, appearing at the top of the stairs.

Ginny's frown deepened. "James Potter, why is your wand out?"

James stuck it in his back jeans pocket. "Sorry, mum, I had to – "

Fred gave his brother a nasty smile from two steps below their mother.

"You know the rules," Ginny said firmly. "Fred can't hex you back, so you can't hex him."  
"Yes, mum." James lowered his head in defeat.

"Good. Now help me put these things away."

Fred watched the two of them and tried to feel some sense of victory, but anything he might have felt was cut short:

"_Crybaby squib_," Lily hissed viciously from behind him, and shouldered roughly past him up the stairs.

Fred felt the covert hex hit him as she went by, and itched resignedly, planning his next move. He jerked his chin up at Albus Severus, who was watching everything wide-eyed, and the little boy fled.

* * *

Fred woke to the sound of hysterical crying, and smiled.

James rolled over and brandished his wand. "If you've hurt Lily, I swear I'll hex your eyes out."

"That depends on your definition of 'hurt,'" Fred retorted, whipping the bottle of Magic-Off out from under his pillow and spritzing the air between them, just as James' wand slashed down.

"That'll only work once, you know."  
"No," Fred replied calmly, spraying again, "It won't." He would, however, have to reorder a couple more bottles. He hoped his mother's owl wouldn't be too busy this week.

"Whatever. I don't have time for this." James threw off the covers and stalked to the door, flinging it open.

Fred rolled out of bed and stopped behind his brother. He watched appreciatively.

Lily's long red hair was a splotchy mess of puke-purple.

Ginny stood in the hallway in front of the bathroom. "Hold still, dear! _Chevelis carmenis! Pigmentum nullo!_"

"I tried, mum, I tried all of them! You know I know how to change my hair color!" Lily was hiccupping wretchedly.

Harry came out of the bedroom, blinking owlishly. He put on his glasses and looked straight over James' shoulder at Fred. "Frederick," he said in a low voice, not so much a question as a statement.

Fred shivered. He loved it when his father looked at him, really looked at him. Wordlessly, he grabbed a box from his dresser and handed it to his father.

Harry's eyebrows shot up, and a ghost of a smile twitched around his lips. "Oh," he said. He pulled out his own wand with his other hand. "_Tergeo jello_," he said, pointing his wand at Lily's hair.

Lily went completely silent, her auburn tresses restored, as her mother grabbed the box from Harry.

"What in blazes is this? Why didn't my spells work?"

"Ginny, it's all right," Harry said. "It's a muggle thing. Lily's okay." He looked straight at Fred again. "And now Fred and I are going to have a little talk in the study."

_...and then Dad tried to use the Pensieve, but it didn't work because I'm not magic, so he just had to tell me instead, how his old Professor Snape was a really great wizard, but even he got teased and hexed at school. And then he said that I've done really well for myself, and he says he knows how hard it is to be the odd one out. Then I said, well, you got magic out of it after all, while I'm the only person in the family without it. Then he mentioned you. It wasn't his idea for me to write to you. I Googled you online and found your email through the Ladies' Circle, and I thought..._

Petunia stared at the laptop perched on her immaculate engineered-marble countertop, feeling dizzy as a rush of memories hit her: the longing, the bitterness, the emptiness as she and Lily had grown farther apart. A wave of anger surged over her. How very like Harry Potter to let something like this go on in his own house. She skimmed the letter again, held her breath, and tentatively clicked Reply.

"Hello, Fred," Petunia typed. "We would be delighted to have you here for a week. Your Uncle Dudley and your Great-uncle Vernon have a fishing trip planned for next weekend, and they would love to have you along." She bit her lip and slowly pecked out the galling sentence, "Please send an owl from your father so that I can arrange the trip."

Petunia paused. She highlighted 'father' with the mouse and pressed the backspace key. She typed 'mother' in its place. There was only so far she was willing to go.


End file.
